One thing, though. From my experience, if creativity is a habit, it's formed by practice. You don't establish any habit right away. You have to practice creating a habit, let's say drawing and watercolor until you rewire your neural pathways so that what you're practicing becomes a habit.

However, my experience is that with any creative practice, you are involved, to a large degree, in discovery. You have to be able to continually tweak what you're practicing, sometimes on a daily basis, in order to expand your abilities and understanding.

In other words, if you establish a particular way (habit) of doing a drawing or watercolor and then discover that you have to change that particular way in order to grow as an artist, you have to un-learn certain habits.

As a different sort of example, let's say you've learned a Mozart piano sonata so thoroughly that it's ingrained in your neural pathways and muscle memory and you can play it "by heart". Then you discover that some of the ornamentation and a couple of notes you've learned are wrong and you have to un-learn and re-learn those parts. That's difficult and requires more practice to change what's become habitual.

Actually, I think that habits in creative work mostly consist of establishing the habit of sitting down to practice. Also, sometimes, establishing parameters like, I will sit down at 4 PM for 30 minutes to practice drawing. So, I don't think that creativity is a habit but the habit of practicing creative work is crucial to creativity.

Seth Godin has been blogging daily for... gosh, I don't know how many years now. His posts are usually short and sweet but highly inspirational and effective. He committed to the habit of writing daily posts and continues to practice daily (for all of our benefit).

Anyone who meditates daily knows that there is the habit of sitting down to meditate and then the practice of actual meditation which can be (and usually is) wildly different during every sitting.

Setting parameters helps with establishing habits that you can practice within. Particular methods designed to lead you step by step through progressive exercises are also extremely helpful. Commitment is vital. Finally, there's nothing like accountability to keep you honest and on track as you establish your habit of practice.

"Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love... Our aim must never be to defeat or humiliate the white man, but to win his friendship and understanding."​—Martin Luther King, Jr.

Because my mind was going a mile a minute when I sat down to meditate this morning, I plopped a vase of mums directly in the line of my meditative gaze. I'm not sure that this helped me step out of the thought stream but they sure were beautiful to look at. Before I stood up to move along with my day, I gathered them between my hands, buried my face in them and inhaled deeply. I love the smell of mums!

It is too, too easy to be sucked into the virtual world of (often) horror and mayhem. Make it a practice to focus on the beautiful objects in your space. After all, you put them there, didn't you? If you haven't filled your space with objects of beauty that the light can find, please, do yourself a favor and do so now.

The objects that the light finds and illuminates will illuminate your mind, whether you love them or not. Practice seeing what the light illuminates. Practice loving that.

“A weakness of all human beings is trying to do too many things at once.”—Henry Ford

There's no such thing as multi-tasking

The ocean waves do not try to reach shore at the same time.

The leaves on a tree do not try to change color at once.

Each wave, each leaf is a unique manifestation of an unfolding process of living experience. Human beings moving through space and time are also unfolding processes of living experiences.

But the human mind? Especially with gazillions of distractions here in the early 21st century? We are so easily distracted that we miss much of the beautiful unfolding process of life.

I make this claim with confidence because I am one of the most easily distracted people I know.

I practice meditation briefly every day but nothing, no meditation I have come across, calms and focuses my attention like drawing or painting. It may not be for everyone but it sure works for me.

In my experience, multitasking is a myth. Trying to multitask, or even expecting yourself to be able to multitask, can leave you dizzy, drained, overwhelmed, ungrounded. You may think that you are working on several projects simultaneously but, in fact, you can only take action on one thing or think one thought at a time (no matter how brief that time may be).

Expect yourself to do one thing at a time and plan for that.It's a sure way to sanity. ​

"Two things cannot happen at once; it is impossible. It is easy to imagine that two things are happening at once, because our journey back and forth between the two may be very speedy. But even then we are doing only one thing at a time.

"The idea of mindfulness is to slow down the fickleness of jumping back and forth. We have to realize that we are not extraordinary mental acrobats. We are not all that well trained. And even an extraordinarily well-trained mind could not manage that many things at once--not even two. But because things are very simple and direct, we can focus on, be aware and mindful of, one thing at a time. That one-pointedness, that bare attention, seems to be the basic point." ​— Chogyam Trungpa, from "The Four Foundations of Mindfulness Meditation"

I have a long list of reasons why I continue to teach drawing and watercolor after 20 years. One reason is that the process allows people the opportunity to quiet their minds and practice focusing on one task at a time.

Practicing drawing and watercolor is mindfulness training on steroids.

Inspiring you to ​heal yourself, shine your lightand make your own magic